Pussy riot member Pyotr Verzilov regains consciousness. He's been hospitalized for three days and friends fear he was poisoned.
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Pussy riot member and Mediazona publisher Pyotr Verzilov has regained consciousness after three days of intensive care treatment, his friends told Meduza. He remains hospitalized at the Moscow Sklifosovsky Institute, where his friends say doctors believe he was poisoned by anticholinergic drugs.
According to Veronika Nikulshina, Verzilov's common-law wife, he is again able to recognize her and his mother, but he is still experiencing “hallucinations” and remains in a “delusional state.”
On September 11, Verzilov suddenly started losing his vision, speech, and mobility, and paramedics brought him to Moscow’s Bakhrushin City Clinical Hospital, where he was treated at the toxicology wing before being transferred to the Moscow Sklifosovsky Institute on September 13.
A member of Pussy Riot and the publisher of the investigative news website Mediazona, which conducts often daring reporting on Russia's criminal justice system, Verzilov has been a prominent figure in Russia’s anti-Kremlin opposition movement since the late 2000s, when he performed in the controversial “Voina” artist-activist group alongside his then wife, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
(1) Anticholinergic drugs
Neurotransmitter-blocking medicines used to treat conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, and more. In the event of anticholinergic-drug poisoning, in rare cases, symptoms can persist for up to two weeks.